Decoration Day

Mama’s memories: Mama’s memories with some gentle editing on my part.

In a cemetery a few miles from Hanceville, AL is where the West and Nichols families are buried. It’s named Fairview West (not after the West family name, but the direction because there is a Fairview East outside of Cullman to the east!).

Decoration Day is and has been the day people bring flowers in honor of their loved ones buried there. It’s always the 2nd Sunday of May. (Me: this is Mother’s Day, but the holiday wasn’t established until around 1907. This family tradition preceded our formal Mother’s Day).

Papa has two sisters and their husbands, two infant sisters, his parents, and several brothers buried there. There are also four sons (my mama’s brothers): Clark, Vann, Glenn, and Hugh. Hugh’s wife, Johnnie, and infant daughter, Belva Jean, are there.  Mama’s mother (my mama’s grandmother) Mary Mason Nichols, and several half brothers are buried there as well.

Mama always grew lots of flowers. As I was growing up and the time came to decorate the graves, Mama would cut the flowers. (Hyacinth, roses, buttercups, gladiolus, wild honeysuckle). We’d lay them on the back porch where she would sort the flowers into arrangements, cut & tie ribbon or scraps from clothing around each bunch, and then put the stems in a bucket of water until Sunday morning.

We would cook a big dinner and take flowers to the cemetery and visit with the other relatives who came.

Me: I’m not sure if everyone went to their own home to eat the big dinner or if people gathered together during her childhood.

From the time I was an infant Mother’s Day was spent at the cemetery for decoration day. There was a large group of family members who would come. Everyone was dressed in their Sunday finest. Suit coats, ties, hats for the men. Women in dresses (for us it was usually that year’s Easter dress), hats, purses, high heels.  Of course the purses and shoes matched. The women looked for smooth, flat stones to place their high heels on so they wouldn’t sink in the ground while visiting.

Our family plot was edged with a small stone ledge, a few inches high. The young cousins enjoyed trying to walk it like a tightrope.  The area was shaded by a huge oak tree where the men would stand around visiting while smoking and the women stood chatting. As children we were taught to be mindful of not stepping on the graves, not as a matter of superstition, but out of honor for the dead.

For years, everyone would take a covered dish over to my mama’s cousin’s house (Thelma Hicks Arnold). We would eat and visit, the kids would run around. Thelma and her husband had a lumber yard next door and the boys enjoyed being over there playing. I remember puppies and usually brand new kittens whenever we went. I can still feel the sharp claws in my arm from the tiny kittens.

Through the years the crowd grew larger and we moved the gathering over to Sportsman’s Lake in Cullman. We rented a pavilion. We ate wonderful food, all homemade by some of the best cooks. That’s where I tasted chicken and dumplings and developed a love for them. One of mama’s cousins brought them. I want to say her name was Nelda, but not sure now. She brought them every year and I really looked forward to them.

My mama’s two aunts, Aunt Reddie (Henrietta) and Aunt Babe (Bertram) were local and were there well up into their late 80s, early 90s. Aunt Babe lived to be over 100.  Mama’s Uncle Troy was there as well. He drove from California to come visit his sisters.

Over time kids grew up, families expanded, and we stopped meeting together as a group. I also think that was when the eldest generation was no longer here.

This is truly the only tradition that has been maintained throughout my lifetime. I see it as a sacred honor to continue it still today.